


My Uniform Pride, Your Arrogant Side

by elliot_cant_write



Category: Hamilton - Fandom, Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - World War I, Angst, F/M, Hamilton was a horrible husband, That's such an ugly word btw, basically every horrible thing that happened in their life's but in a different time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 10:05:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9435383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elliot_cant_write/pseuds/elliot_cant_write
Summary: He'd say over dinner that he couldn't care less about the opinions of the unwashed masses and Philip would laugh and Angie would roll her eyes and Eliza would pretend that she didn't want to scream at him to STOP LYING because if he hadn't cared about the opinions of those 'unwashed masses' he would have never told the world his secrets in the first place. If he had cared about their children or even given the slightest bit of a damn about her, he would have taken that secret to the grave.





	

The private affairs of the Hamilton's were not something that the public made an effort to stay out of. One would think that Eliza would have grown used to it after so many years, but whenever she left their house and was forced to endure the constant whispers and pitying glances it felt like a wound being ripped open for the thousandth time. And she hated it. 

Alexander joked about it. He'd say over dinner that he couldn't care less about the opinions of the unwashed masses and Philip would laugh and Angie would roll her eyes and Eliza would pretend that she didn't want to scream at him to STOP LYING because if he hadn't cared about the opinions of those 'unwashed masses' he would have never told the world his secrets in the first place. If he had cared about their children or even given the slightest bit of a damn about her, he would have taken that secret to the grave. But no, she wasn't John, or Angelica, or Maria. She was Eliza. His wife. 

Angelica didn't know she knew. Her sister (HER SISTER) came back, picked up Eliza's broken pieces, and tried her hardest to put them back together in an order that vaguely resembled how she was before this whole mess. She did it all, weaving lovely words that would have been comforting had Eliza not known she was doing this purely because she felt guilty about her own minor role in all this. 

Angie always accompanied her when she went to the stores. She endlessly claimed that it was because she wanted to get out of the house; that having so many people around was suffocating; that Philip was being obnoxious again. She never said what Eliza knew to be the truth, that she was on orders from Alexander to make sure Eliza didn't just leave one day and not bother to turn back. It turned out to be helpful once, when Eliza saw a young couple that reminded her so much of she and Alexander (clear blue eyes and warm smiles and laughter and paying no attention to the world around them or how he was just waiting to break her heart) that she nearly broke again. Angie heard her breath catch and dragged her home and before she could comprehend what was going on Eliza was sobbing into a pillow, Alexander's pillow, and cursing her inability to be either a good wife or a good mother. 

Of course, the war continued alongside her lack of what you could call existence. The War To End All Wars they called it and Alexander said, long past the children had gone to bed, The War To End Us All. Eliza wasn't sure if he was referring to the world or the two of them. 

Those nights were some of the last good ones, though she'd never have thought of them that way at the time. But she knew all seven of her children were safe and would continue to be and that all things considered she was okay. Alexander would go out and give speeches and she'd pretend to support him and pretend that in the darkest corners of her mind she hadn't locked away a secret desire to seem him fail. 

She and Alexander accompanied Philip to the station three months before his nineteenth birthday and Eliza pretended that she was with her loving husband and that Philip wasn't going to France and that her heart wasn't breaking all over again. She was pregnant with a child Philip would never get to see. 

She cried when he was born, holding his delicate head up with her hand and balancing the rest if his body in her lap. She cried even harder when Alexander gently brushed back her sweat-soaked hair and suggested that they name him Philip for the one they lost. 

Philip wasn't the only one they lost. Eliza saw the shattered look in Angie's eyes, sitting on the parlour couch after the funeral, and knew that they were never going to be okay again. Angie locked herself away in every sense of the phrase and the biggest connection Eliza could find to her eldest daughter was the occasional warble of the songs Philip used to play drifting out from under her door. 

She forgave Alexander. Because she needed him. She needed him at night when she felt like she was drowning in her his THEIR bed and she needed him when their youngest children, too young to understand the concepts of war and death, asked her what happened to big brother Philip and why Angie didn't smile any more and why Eliza teared up every time she looked at the new baby. 

And they were alright. Eliza washed her hair for the first time in two weeks and put on a clean dress and a coat and Angelica watched the children while she and Alexander went out. She didn't drink and he had long since quit but they were both perfectly happy to walk around the town with nothing more than a single tea that they shared. 

The whispers and stares were still there but somehow they bothered Eliza less. Alexander's truths felt so far away from where they were that she was hardly corrected to them anymore. Maybe it was pathetic to act like he had never done anything wrong but she was so tired. John was gone, Angelica was far away, and as for Maria...Eliza couldn't bring herself to be angry at the poor girl. 

Was it her fault for never seeing it coming? Was it her fault for not feeling when Alexander left their bed that morning; for not waking up when he undoubtedly pushed back her bangs and pressed one last kiss to her forehead? Was it her fault that she had no idea where her husband had gone until she found the letter, addressed to the best-of-wives-and-best-of-women who he had cheated on, whose son he had killed, whose daughter he had destroyed, who he abandoned for his stupid inability to let things go that ultimately got him killed? 

Eliza had spent so much if her life pretending that sometimes she felt that the only real part of her left was that in Alexander and properity and formally be damned, she wanted the world to know that part. 

One by one her children moved out and with them they took the knowledge of a brilliant man who destroyed himself and the terribly nieve girl he dragged down with him. Not that they ever saw it that way, of course, her children idolised their father and Eliza refused to take that away from them, from him. Alexander wanted a legacy and if Eliza accomplished anything in her life, she wanted it to be giving him that.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm in a generally awful mood and hate Alexander Hamilton with every fibre of my being so I wrote this rather than doing my homework. Anyway, I have to wake up in like four hours so I'm sorry for inflicting this on you and thank you so much for reading.  
> Adios, ciao, viva la France, etc.  
> Edit like a week later: I neglected to mention that I totally stole the title from the song Getaways Turned Holidays by Meg and Dia. Go listen to it. I love it.   
> Okay carry on


End file.
